I'm bailing. In fact, I'm trading this book in for something better, like a Harlequin Historical or some hinky paranormal romance, which will probably be more believable and contain more acute, intelligent characterization than Mongoliad. Gack. This clunky mess almost killed my love for Neal Stephenson and thus I am stopping before it succeeds. I did, however, learn something from this fiasco: books should not be written by committees of weapons nerds.

This was great! Not as dense as your typical Stephenson, but with the fantastic range and scope and depth. I was a little concerned about this, given it's a collaborative work written by a bunch of fantasy authors after they created a club for playing with ancient weapons. And true, there is a lot of fighting in this book, but it's actually pretty compelling - it turns out that when a fight is described analytically and tactically by people who know what they're talking about, it comes across al...

If "Reamde" was Stephenson's "most accessible book" -- which I took to mean that his editors demanded he write a "popular" book -- then "Mongoliad" returns to Stephenson's usual manner of writing books that are challenging for the reader. To put it mildly.If "Anathem" was intellectually challenging in its intellectual exploration of multiverses, then "Mongoliad" is challenging in its gut-wrenching, emotional depictions of the world in which it takes place.This world would be eastern Europe, on t...

In the interest of being a Neal Stephenson completist, I had to read this.However, I had doubts about the whole novel-by-committee concept and, sadly, I felt that those doubts were justified.The concept of the novel was good - it's got an interesting historical setting, a good mix of different types of characters, some action, some drama... I'm sure it all looked very good on paper. And, it's not actually bad. It's just not great.The characters never fully come to life - I felt like they'd work

I am a huge neal stephenson fan, and I've noticed that his work is usually composed of swashbuckling and ideas, in some combination (his favorite ideas to explore seem to be language, currency, globalisation, and homosexual mathematicians). Basically all of his books are like action action action lengthy exposition action action END. His best work has an even mixture and pacing of these two elements. I was a little miffed that reamde was like 90% swashbuckling, but mongoliad was much worse. Not

The Mongoliad is apparently an attempt to answer the question of why the Mongol hordes stopped their sweeping invasion across Europe. An epic tale of historical fiction told as two parallel stories. The first follows a group of knights, a fairly rag-taggle mixture of knights from different countries - many not even speaking a common tongue - but united under their common purpose as the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. Not always a Christian order, but now appearing keen to at least appear part of...

Immensely disappointing, slow, and disjointed.

Audiobook from Brilliance AudioNarrated by Luke DanielsLength: 13.25 hoursNote: I received this audiobook as a complete package with a prequel, Sinner, included. This review only covers The Mongoliad: Book One, as I reviewed Sinner: A Prequel to the Mongoliad separately.The Mongoliad: Book One is a different sort of book. It pretty much violated all of my typical "rules" for a book, and I still find myself wanting to read on, to find out what happens in The Mongoliad: Book Two. I'm not sure the

A fun book about manly medieval men hitting each other with swords. Setting it in Mongol territory means that pretty much any manly man in Eurasia can turn up and hit someone with a sword. It's almost like one of those "greatest warrior" TV shows -- can a Samurai beat a Crusader? Can a Magyar take down a Teutonic Knight? This isn't a criticism; the authors obviously picked a time and place when they could have fun with swordfighting heroes.The characters are a mixed bag. I found the Mongol warri...

This alternate history is good, and suddenly you find yourself caring about the characters, many of whom seem to blend for a while.The book is most quest as some knights travel to save thier world from the Mongol horde. The Mongols have thier own problems. The reader finds herself in the position of rooting for both sides. The book is more action based than character based, and seems more movie like in this regard. Still enjoyable.

Originally published at Reading RealityThe Mongoliad, of which Book One has just been published, is any number of things. It's the first book in something its seven creators call The Foreworld Saga--more on that later. It's also a cooperative effort with seven, count them, seven authors--but it isn't a collection of short stories. It's a novel, at least as published.It started out as an experiment. A serial novel, published online at mongoliad.com, then the result edited down and published as a

This book has about a million authors, but it doesn't read like it does. It's also got about a million viewpoint characters (well, more like eight) so I had my usual negative reaction to being dragged out of one story I loved into another one I wasn't so interested in. In general, I did like most of the plotlines, though I don't care for authors introducing new POV characters in the middle or even near the end of a book; it feels like it dilutes the story. On the other hand, one of those new POV...

The Mongoliad is a book written by geeks.For geeks.Geeks like me.Seven people came together and created this monstrous book fit for someone with a particular interest or obsession with history, weapons, and warfare. With a generously unhealthful portion of unique and compulsively likable characters on both sides of the battlefield with their own equally important agendas and now I'm in trouble because I'm rooting for characters on both sides and this isn't going to end well for my heart.Wh

Maybe it was a case of too many cooks...I don't know. It took seven people to write this thing?Seriously? How does that even work? I'm envisioning authors huddled around someone's kitchen table, rolling a 20-sided die to determine the next plot twist.It's certainly not a bad book. The action and bloody violence will keep you turning the pages. But, the whole thing turns out to be an oddly emotionless experience. I can't say the characters are cardboard, as that would imply they have two dimensi

Cnan is hardy and crafty, a trail scout and a 'Binder' (what this means not explained in the text). She is on the side of the knights of Christendom.Another protagonist, and on the Mongols' side, is Gansukh, a young horseman of the steppes who is sent to tell the Khagan, one of the sons of Genghis Khan, to curb his drinking. He is too naive to realize what a dangerous task this could be.Soon you are well into a stewpot of strange names and outlandish customs, guttural umlauts and other accents.

Even though this book was written by a committee of writers I found the subject matter interesting and the story line tight. Characters are well developed, widely varied, and interesting. The book just ends and I already have Book two on my shelf to read after I read a couple of others. Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson attracted me to this series.Not science fiction, but more historical adventures

There is a LOT of potential in this book. The story is interesting, and I imagine that the story is also historically informative. However, I finished the first book without having been made to care about a single one of the many characters. It's not that the characters are off-putting (except for the alcoholic khan, who manages to be both frustrating and boring at the same time). It's just one is given no reason to find them interesting, to side with them, to hope or fear for them, or even to d...

I enjoyed reading this first book of a three book series. The book was free from Amazon, and there are two more books in the series. The book was written by several authors with complementary writing styles. The mechanics of writing were good.A group of warrior monks are on their way to kill the Khan. A Mongolian warrior has been sent to the Khan's court to keep the Khan from drinking himself to death. A female is guiding the monks to the Khan, and a female slave is at Court teaching the Mongoli...

This is a really tough one to review. Mongoliad is a serial novel which was produced interactively as part of a transmedia franchise. According to the website, it's "sort of the thing that Charles Dickens wrote, but with a decidedly 21st century twist", emphasizing the role of social media and community resources in the project's idea and creation.I have to say the serialized format and the multiple authors both facilitated and hindered my enjoyment. Not surprisingly, the novel did not always fe...